~ the great escape from every day life

a light bulb moment…

… everyone who has been reading my posts recently must be sick of hearing me talk about how I have great plans to make a coat, and I keep turning in circles around it…

… this weekend I traced the pattern and cut the material, and didn’t get any further – I had 2 whole days to sew, I made a baby snow suit in less time… what is holding me back?

… last night I was thinking things through. It is not like I have never made a coat before, one of my early projects, when I was in high school, was a “fabulous” fashionable carpet coat (forgive me, it was the 80s). Later, during my university days I made a reversible fleece for my boyfriend’s sister, then I made myself a reversible rain jacket with a cosy fleece lining and I made a smart lined woollen blazer… there may have been others since, I can’t remember right now…

… so what is holding me back?

… I have always sewn alone, never really known anyone else who sews except my mother who guided me for my first steps, and a friend’s mother who worked on some of my early projects with me (including the carpet coat) and my best friend who has always been far away in another town, on another continent…

… I used to buy patterns, or burda magazine, buy my material and work my way through the instructions until I had a finished garment. Later I stopped buying patterns, used existing clothes, or ideas and drafted my own patterns, made things as I imagined them…

… the Minoru is very, very different. It seems everyone on the internet has already made it, already blogged about it, posted photos of their finished product… there is so much information available about it, every time I take a step towards starting it, I get lost in researching what someone has to say about some specific detail, I worry that mine won’t compare to all the amazing examples out there… and I lose a day, or two, stumbling from one blog to another, and not making progress!

… this morning I decided I need to shake this, and just go for it, as if it were my own design, something from a magazine, something I have no idea how it will end up – like everything else I make that turns out fine!

that is such a good point, and an issue i’ve been slowed down by, too. in fact, i’m in a bit of a creative standstill just now and feel i’m spending way too much time thinking about what to do instead of just doing something! good luck with your minoru. i may be the one person in the interwebs who hasn’t made it…yet 🙂

Thanks – I have encountered a few hiccups with the Minoru (chose the wrong size and seem to be making an XXXL despite being my measurements), and the material I chose wasn’t really up to the project… so I am a bit blocked and need to decide whether to take it all apart and start over, but it is a straight forward pattern.
I hope you manage to get over your standstill and can come up with an easy project “away from the public eye” to get your creative juices flowing again 🙂